lessen the number to be taken care of, and at the same time, afford the fullest opportunity for the exercise of the strength of those who do not need care; and herein the workings of justice are more beneficent than the efforts of beneficence itself.

Therefore, there can be no other purpose to a free government in treating with the defective classes than to treat them with a view of keeping them from interference with the healthy classes, and thus preserving the best qualities of the race against the delinquent, the recalcitrant, or whoever undertake in any way to violate the terms of the political compact, or are incapable of compliance with those terms. Whilst the penitentiary, the insane asylum, and the almshouse are necessities of civilization, they afford no reason for protecting the idle or maintaining the thriftless, or for creating an individual class, or for bolstering up the contracting power of those who are incapable of meeting its demands, or for interfering in any way with the freedom or sanctity of contract. A free government in taking care of the incapables and the malcontents does so from the duty which it owes to civilization; it does so from its sense of justice, and in adhering to this sense it cannot faithfully administer this duty by adopting any course which tends to increase the num ber of these defectives and malcontents, or to place them in the way of the normal and industrious. They are not in the race of industry, and cannot properly be placed there. To put them in that

race, and to maintain them by props through sympathy, is only preventing equality in the conditions of the race. The government's benevolence, therefore, is the sin of political injustice. The penalty which is visited upon this, is political and moral deterioration.

CHAPTER XII

ENGLAND AND AMERICA; THE RELATION OF EACH

TO INDUSTRIAL LIBERTY.

In the reign of Queen Anne, the policy of non-paternalism, which had been growing for a long time, became predominant. This policy originated partly, no doubt, in the reaction from the intense feeling generated by the religious discussion which had prevailed in the preceding reign, and partly because the industrial classes had been steadily increasing in importance with the accumulation of industrial wealth. Within fifty years after the creation of the Whig party, which originated in 1680, so great was the reaction from the violence which had characterized the contest between the Popish and Protestant parties that, as Green says, "before fifty years of their rule had passed, Englishmen had forgotten that it was possible to persecute for differences of religion, or to put down the liberty of the press, or to tamper with justice, or to rule without a parliament." The motives which characterized the Whig

"A Short History of the English People," p. 696.

party in its secular administration have been set forth as the preservation of the power and majesty of the people; the authority and independency of parliament in its relation to the king, liberty, resistance, deposition. The motives which characterized this party in its religious administration were expressed in the maxim that the government "should accord toleration to all Protestant sects, and in this maxim it found new strength in the manifest material benefits which it produced." The whole power of the party was exerted in decreasing the coercive power of the ruler over the subject and in furthering toleration. Its principles were exemplified in such legislation as the Habeas Corpus Act, and later in the Bill of Rights, framed to secure the subject against monarchical aggressions.3

This disposition against paternalism continued to be manifested, and in the main prevailed, until it was interrupted by the French Revolution, and afterwards by the Napoleonic wars, which tended to unsettle all European policies, and, as I have heretofore shown, imparted to the English statesmen a fear of the people. The non-paternal movement, however, somewhat recovered from its lapse, and in the early part of the present century was exerting its influence manifestly for the cultivation of individuality in the citizen. The legislation which proceeded from this

3

1 Bolingbroke's "Dissertations on Parties." p. 5.

2 Lecky "England in the Eighteenth Century,” vol. I., p. 209.

Spencer The Man versus the State," p. 3.

spirit was characterized by an encouragement of selfdependence and a discouragement of governmental assistance, until the policy of non-paternalism produced at last the repeal of the Corn Laws. From that time to the present, there has been a gradually growing tendency in the opposite direction, exhibited in the ever-increasing efforts on the part of the government to reach out its paternal hand in interference with the citizen. In America, after our Revolution, inspired partly by the more liberal policy which had prevailed in England, but more by the sense of independence born of our Constitution and promoted by surrounding conditions, the legislation was chiefly of a character which promoted individual self-dependence. The influence of the French Revolution, which stayed the progress of this phase of freedom in England had, as I have already indicated, but slight effect in that direction in America. It rather afforded an opportunity for following the middle path between the extreme conservatism that set in in England, and the violence which was born of the French Revolution.

After the return of the English to their former policy of non-interference, the conditions both in England and in America continued favorable to the growth of self-dependence and self-restraint, until steam and the mechanical inventions became potent factors in the progress of industry. These produced a sudden change, which threw the industrial orders. of society altogether out of their customary channels,